


A Crustacean Prince

by orphan_account



Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: F/M, Fairy Tale Retellings, Fairy Tale Style, Fluff and Crack, Not Canon Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-16
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-11-14 18:45:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11214009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “You?” the princess asked, bewildered by the sudden turn of events. “You’re a lobster!”“Tell me,” the lobster said dryly, “who is best suited to find your stone? You, the helpless human girl, or me, the lobster who can swim?”[The Frog Prince fairy tale AU. Ignore everything about canon]





	A Crustacean Prince

**Author's Note:**

> Written using f!Corrin since apparently we can't specify it in the relationship tags anymore. 
> 
> and this was also written for a friend! she liked it a lot so I decided to post it here, but maybe only temporarily since it's a little embarrassing lol

 

     One fine summer in Valla, upon the mossy rocks of a wooded spring, there sat a princess with her dragonstone. To amuse herself, she tossed it in the air as high as she could, enchanted by how the last rays of twilight gleamed through its facets, casting beautiful blue prisms upon the water’s reflection. In a show of pride, she threw her stone so high in the air that when she extended her arm to catch it, she stumbled upon some moss and lost her footing.     

She would have fallen if not for her nimble instincts, but she watched her stone slip through her fingers with a heart filled with dread. It plopped right in the middle of the spring where the water rippled in rings at where it sank.

“Damn,” she muttered. “I don’t think Azura has a second dragonstone to spare.” She craned her neck to peer beneath the water's surface, but it was too deep to fathom anything. Hopeless, tears began to form in her eyes. “What in the world shall I do?”

As she wept, nightfall slowly crept upon the wood. Not even the wind rustling through the trees could come to the princess’s aid, let alone see her despair. If she abandoned her dragonstone now, she would, in all likelihood, never see it again.

But a strange voice called out to her in the night, breaking her stupor. “Weeping by yourself certainly won’t help your predicament,” it said, its voice as deep as a bullfrog’s. “But I can, if you’d like.”

She reached for her sword at once. “Who’s there?” she called tremulously. “Show yourself!”

“Why don’t you try looking down?”  

She almost screamed. Upon a bed of fallen reeds, there lay the most majestic lobster she had ever seen, with long curling antennae and claws the size of gauntlets. The spiny ridges and grooves on its shell bore such an uncanny resemblance to plates of armor that it almost gave the impression of a very horizontal knight.

“You?” she asked, bewildered by the turn of events. “You’re a lobster!”  

“So?”

She gestured at it inarticulately, unable to string words into sentences.

“Tell me,” the lobster said dryly, “who is best suited to find your stone? You, the helpless human girl, or me, the lobster who can swim?”

The absurdity of listening to a lobster whose logic was sounder than her own was almost too much for her poor heart to bear. With little choice left in the matter, she conceded. “Very well,” she said. “Since you offered, I accept.”

“As you wish.” With surprising alacrity, it dove into the spring, leaving a small trail of bubbles in its wake.

After a while, the lobster resurfaced from the spring with the dragonstone held between both its claws. The princess was overjoyed to have her treasure back. But when she tried to gift the lobster a boon to show her thanks, it refused.

“Oh, but please!” she insisted. “I must repay you for your kindness. Anything your heart desires.”

There was a pause. “Anything?” asked the lobster, almost hopefully.

“Of course,” she said. “I live in a castle with fine silks and gilded chests filled with jewels, all yours for the taking. You need only say yes. What would you like?” But despite her generosity, she hardly expected the lobster to concede. What on earth could a crustacean want from a princess which she had within her means to offer?

“Your love and devotion,” the lobster declared.

“My _what?”_

There was another pause. “You heard me.”

She was at a loss for words.

When the silence was too much for the lobster to bear, it snapped impatiently, “Oh, very well! Then just a kiss, if love is too much to ask.”

She fought every urge to wrinkle her nose, staring down at its mottled brown shell and tiny bug-like legs with mounting displeasure. “Does it have to be from me?” she asked fretfully. “May I ask my butler to do it?”

“Of course not. Are you crazy?”

This time she did wrinkle her nose in earnest. She sighed. “Just one kiss? Just one, and you swear it?”

“I swear it. You’ll be rewarded very handsomely for your kindness.”

Somehow she doubted that, but nevertheless it was with great reluctance that she plucked him from the ground with her handkerchief and placed him upon her hand. She almost fainted when she felt its little legs crawl forward to find better purchase on her wrist.

“Mind the antennae,” it said when she pushed her hair across one shoulder. “They’re sensitive.”

Heart pounding, hands clammy, and eyes closed, the princess slowly brought the lobster closer to her face so that she might press her lips against its cold, damp shell. The moment she accepted her fate, the air around her erupted in a cloud of thick pink smoke. When she opened her eyes, she was astonished to find beams of glittering sparkles taking the place of the lobster in her hand. Her breath caught at what she saw instead.

The most breathtaking prince she had ever laid eyes upon was standing before her in the moonlight, resplendent in a suit of armor as red as her own blushing face. He was unnervingly handsome - like a knight out of a fairy tale, brilliant and fierce, sun-kissed skin and hair so long that it touched the small of his back. She wasn’t entirely sure how it happened, but she was in his arms, her body pressed snugly against his own, soft and curved. Her head was swimming.

“That wasn’t so bad, now was it?” he asked her coyly. There was a richer timbre to his voice now that he was human, one that made her knees weak. “I thank you for freeing me from my exoskeletal prison. Your name, milady?”

“I can’t remember,” she said dumbly, still dazed by her good fortune.

He laughed. “All in good time, then. Shall we?” He extended his arm and she took it without hesitation, leading him out of the woods and back to her castle.

* * *

     Later she discovered that he was a prince of Hoshido who had been enchanted by an evil wizard from a land across the Bottomless Canyon. He had been doomed to remain a lobster until a princess broke the spell with a kiss.

“Milady,” he said grandly, “you have broken this cruel spell, and now I have nothing to wish for save that you leave your castle and join me as I take you to my father’s kingdom where I shall love and cherish you for the rest of your days. Do you consent?”

“Okay,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “Sounds good to me.”

Then it was with full and glorious splendor that the prince whisked the princess away to Hoshido in a carriage mounted by four great white charges, where they arrived safely and lived happily until the end of their days.

 

**Author's Note:**

> [ uhh](https://68.media.tumblr.com/b2556ae9d1ca7d74f33456514f90e2bc/tumblr_inline_od0elzuf9E1t0ttjf_540.png)
> 
> edit: it's been about half an hour and I already regret posting this fic LMAO. It'll be taken down before Sunday.


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